Syracuse, N.Y. -- With spring ball finished, with summer practice out there in the distance, and with the 2013 season opener against Penn State 3½ months away, Scott Shafer has some time on his hands.

Not a lot, mind you. He is, after all, a college football coach. And college football coaches never have nothing to do. But if ever Shafer was to be available to mix and mingle with the masses, it is now.

And so, on Monday afternoon he stood before a crowd of 100 and more Rotarians who’d gathered for lunch at the Links at Erie Village, and spoke of many things Orange. And yeah, SU’s new football boss, who hasn’t been on the beat long enough to have turned impossibly bland, did a nice job of spreading the Syracuse gospel.

What follows are some of the words of Scott Shafer, 46 and fearful not at all of what awaits him up there on the Orange bridge:

-- “The program is in good hands. Coach (Doug) Marrone did a nice job laying the foundation of a program that was kind of messed up when we first got here. The kids we inherited were good kids, but the work ethic wasn’t what it needed to be. And we needed to upgrade the talent, and I think we’ve done both the past few years.”

-- “We have a long way to go to get to be where we can be competitive, especially as we look forward to the ACC. We’ve got a lot work to do to get where we want to be. But I do want to say that we have a vision statement for the program and I think that’s always a good place to start. And our statement is: To win with hard-nosed integrity while quietly serving the community.”

-- “I always challenge the kids, ‘Once you make the decision to come to Syracuse, embrace it. Don’t be apologetic for your choice to come here.’ We’ve been a program that has taken relative unknowns in football over the years and produced some really good players who became known across the nation.”

-- “We’ve never going to attract the five-star, highly-touted recruit to Syracuse consistently. We won’t . . . until we get Phil Knight, like Oregon did. We don’t have that formula. So let’s find out what our formula is. Let’s find that ugly kid who’s not quite big enough, not quite as sexy as some of these other big-time recruits. Let’s bring them in here as 18-year-olds and get them to play with a purpose.”

-- “The strengths and the weakness of this team right now? Well, the weakness is that we lost a lot of productive players. We lost our quarterback (Ryan Nassib) who started for three straight year and his two favorite receivers (Alex Lemon and Marcus Sales). Between two of those three, in Nassib and Lemon, we lost two record-holders.

“We lost a really good left tackle (Justin Pugh), and we weren’t the only ones who thought he was pretty good after seeing the NFL Draft. And the kid next to him, Zack Chibane. So we lost two pretty good players on the offensive line, so we’ll have to do a good job filling the void.

“On defense, we lost a lot of good D-linemen and we lost a safety (Shamarko Thomas) who was a really good tackler and made a lot of good plays for us. But every team loses good players every year.

“The quarterback position would probably be our biggest need. If I were to say what the biggest weakness is right now, it would be not knowing who is going to run the offense at that position.

“The strengths are, I think the kids have bought into the idea that we can win games we’re not supposed to win. By out-toughing people. By having a great attitude. By having an unbelievable effort. And by understanding that if we put our head down and try to beat that guy across from us for 60 minutes, we’ll have the chance to win just about any game we play. Maybe we’ll be a little bit uglier than we want to be this year, but at the end of the year if we have more wins than losses, I’m going to be real proud of this outfit.”

-- “For us to be beat people who may be a little more talented than we are, we have to beat them up. I believe that. That’s how you beat teams that are bigger and faster. You hit them right in the nose and when they get up, you knock them down before they get up again. And then by the middle of the fourth quarter they panic and say, ‘Holy cow. We’re getting our butt kicked by Syracuse.’ That’s going to be our formula.”

-- “Recruiting to me is kind of funny because you never know what you’re really getting until they get here. You really don’t know how that kid is going to perform for you until you figure out his psyche. Because it’s such a mental game. All sports are. Everything in life is more mental than physical, right? That’s my opinion.”

-- “This is a broken record, but it’s attitude. Just give me attitude. Give me effort. And we’ll try to put you in position to make plays. Give me attitude, give me effort . . . and see if we coaches don’t screw you up too much.”

-- “I would say we do lose kids because the facilities aren’t good. But we also say that if we do a good job with the kid and we get the passion of my assistant coaches to be seen by the recruit and his parents . . . and we then lose the kid because of a building? I probably didn’t want him, anyway, to be honest with you.”

-- “We’ve gotta focus on Game 1 -- Penn State (on Aug. 31 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey) -- these next four months. But I will say that I can’t wait for that Clemson game (on Oct. 5). It’ll be our ACC home opener. They’ll be rated way up there and we’ll be way down there. But I can’t wait until they come in and we put our boys on the field against them.”

-- “I’ve always said that schemes are overrated. My dad taught me a valuable lesson about playbooks. My dad (Ron, an Ohio high-school coach who died of a heart attack at the age of 53) was a great coach. Obviously I’m biased, but I believe if he’d had the opportunities that I’ve had, he’d be a household name. You’d be listening to Scott Shafer’s father rather than Scott Shafer today.

“One of the lessons he taught me was that everything is cyclical. I remember I was at Rhode Island and I’d just spent time with Bob Stoops, who’s the head coach at Oklahoma now. And I called up Dad and told him all this blah, blah, blah about all of this defense I just learned. And he just listened and listened and listened.

“So I finish telling him that we’re re-inventing defense and he says, ‘Yeah, that’s good, Scottie. We did that for years in the red zone. We called it a double switch. Same thing.’ Then, he said, ‘Hey, listen. Don’t ever forget that you can drive 15 miles in any direction and find a high-school coach who knows more football than you. Don’t ever forget that. Love to Missy. Talk to you soon.’ And then he hung up the phone. And I remember thinking, ‘Thank God for Dad’.”

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Here is the usual weekly “schedule of events” in Bud Poliquin’s corner of syracuse.com:

MONDAY -- By 8 a.m.: The daily column/commentary. By 11:30 a.m.: “How’d I Do?” By 6 p.m.: “Ask Me Anything” by submitting questions (to which I’ll give answers) on any sports-related topic to bpoliquin@syracuse.com. (Please include your name and the identity of your hometown.)

TUESDAY -- By 8 a.m.: The daily column/commentary. By 11:30 a.m.: “Coach’s Corner,” wherein readers can submit questions to any coach at any level in Central New York (and answers will be posted) to bpoliquin@syracuse.com. (Please include name and hometown.) By 6 p.m.: “The Video Store.”

WEDNESDAY -- By 8 a.m.: The daily column/commentary. By 11:30 a.m.: “The List.” By 6 p.m.: “E-Mail Of The Week,” wherein readers can submit legitimate essays/open letters/observations for purposes of posting to bpoliquin@syracuse.com. (Please include name and hometown.)